and since I am on a roll....here is one for the ages.... Now let's keep in mind, that this women is on the Intelligence Committee...how on earth that this idiot was put there is beyond me. But this takes the cake....Keep in mind that her husband owns a clinic to pray away the gayhttp://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2011/06/29/257646/bachmanns-husband-calls-homosexuals-barbarians-who-need-to-be-educated-and-disciplined/

"and yes Matthew....some of us Libs are not the type to be messed with.....not all of us are kumbya :)"

Yeah, Ken, you're striking fear into my heart right now...LOL. I just hope I don't wake up to you "Occupying" my front yard, because I don't need anymore bull$h!t in my rose garden. LOL. You are correct, though...most wars America has been involved in have been when Democrats were the ones in charge. Thank God Comrade Obama didn't get his way with Syria or there would have been one more, to add to that list.

And since I'M on a roll, too....Besides believing they are victims of everything, Liberals believe anyone that disagrees with them, do so for a variety of totally disconnected reasons. This makes their mental disorder even more curious since they believe they are victims at the hands of others but have no problem victimizing other people by verbally assaulting them with a variety of unpleasant names and slurs they feel to be justified in using. Does my diagnosis ring a bell for you, Ken? Just add "tea-bagger" to the below cartoon and look in the mirror.

Lol careful Matthew...my tough guy thing was drenched in sarcasm. Sorry that there is no font. I guess I could have put a j/k at the end...sorry my bad. Bur you do need to understand that a lot of liberals look at the fsr right with a solid chuckle. When I say Liberals I mean educated left of center Libs, not the occupy crowd as you paint us all. The difference between the far left and far right is not all that off...both live pipe dreams. However tge Christian right believes in some strange theories and fairy tales.....want to explain the whole foreable rape controversy? Pray away the gay, anti immigration? How about shutting down our nation because Cruz views Obamacare as tyranny when in reality it is a fantastic cost savings measure. Just remember us Libs are tough guys!

The Tea party started as a grassroots organization with objectives that I could agree with- if only superficially. Primarily, fiscal responsibility. Unfortunately some of their proposed methods take cues from the more whacko Libertarian-Objectivist crowd. (I am a capitalist, but we tried absolute laissez-faire capitalism in the 19th century, and it wasn't pretty.) But then even worse, being a grassroots organization, they were hijacked by groups with Other Goals. The fiscal goals have become a smokescreen for the usual "social conservative" hatemongering. It really isn't hard to find. Plus I'll reiterate that though religion is fine and dandy I certainly don't want my government to be based upon one someone's dominionist fantasies. Matt and any others who claim that this takeover isn't happening- you're kidding yourselves. The Tea Party is absolutely getting taken over by such people. But my biggest objection to them is their utter irrationality about "standing for their principles" and "no compromises", even if this leads to a disaster like the recent shutdown.

Brother, if you are a politician then compromise is your JOB. The battle over the ACA had been fought in the Senate and the House (both did vote, despite what some of the more irrational Obama-haters claim) and the opposition lost. Get over it, and move on to more important issues. Plus, on that note, the current Tea Party is based almost entirely on the proposition that Obama is the antichriSt. They get rather irrational about the issue- birthers and all- and basically are just trying to foil anything that the man tries to do, out of spite. It's hard to support a group that is so irrationally hateful.

And, having just read Craig W.'s bit about pseudo-fascism... wow. That sort of rings true.

Of course, though it wasn't really the question the OP asked, the far left also gets my ire. For instance, I think that Nancy Pelosi is just as bad as Michelle Bachman, though in an inherently different way. Whereas Nancy Pelosi is just the classic self-absorbed elitist "I know what's best for you" socialist would-be dictator, Michelle Bachman is actually insane. :) She's damned near clinically paranoid (theories about a gay conspiracy to have her assassinated) and quite literally thinks that God talks to her. Well, I don't know about the rest of you but in my experience about 99.999999% (as a low estimate) of people throughout history who have claimed that they hold conversations with God have been either insane or con-artists or both. If that's the face of the Tea Party then, yes, the movement should be treated as the laughingstock that it is. What's scary is that there are still so many people supporting it (doubtless drawn to those "social conservative" platforms I mentioned).

Of course, Matt's bit about how liberals tend to be tolerant of everyone except those who disagree with them (and degenerate to name-calling) is pretty much spot on. But then again, their incessant playing of the "race card" is certainly no worse that the fictional plot against Christians that the right keeps trying to proclaim. (Apparently, trying to prevent them from forcing their belief-system upon everyone else constitutes genocide, or something.)

EDIT-- @Fred- And what will you say when it does end up driving costs down for everyone? Because it's kind of irrational to claim that it's doing otherwise, as well. We don't know yet. But somehow I keep hearing right-wingnut politicans giving soundbites about how bad the ACA is performing and how it is harming Americans, driving up prices, etc. Which is patently drivel.

It's going to take years to figure out what happens to healthcare premiums under ACA. Personally, I think that it very obviously will lead to lower premiums. (If nothing else it eliminates the defacto regional monopolies that some insurance providers have had, so now *gasp* they'll actually have to compete.) What all of the anti-ACA people don't understand is that they are already paying for other people's healthcare due to COBRA and similar laws- ERs cannot turn people away just because they lack insurance. So who do you think pays for their medical care? Answer- ultimately, we the insured do, through higher premiums. But if all of those uninsured people get insurance they will presumably get better preventative care (not to mention actually paying a bit for insurance to begin with), and have less ER visits. E.g a diabetic woman with better preventative care will presumably stop coming to the ER in DKA once a month and incurring huge bills that you and I end up paying. So how can it NOT result in lower premiums? (Well, so long as the insurance companies don't conspire to just pocket it as extra profit...)

Cheaper, more efficient is exactly the plan. The states whose leaders oppose the ACA are releasing figures that are quite blatantly manipulated to look like premiums are spiking (usually by using now-illegal "teaser rates" from pre-ACA that they compare to current full rates), and the converse is also true with states whose leaders supported the ACA producing very rosy figures on average premiums. But if you look at all of the *nonpartisan* analyses (CBO, Rand, KFF) they all are showing a modest decrease in average premiums. (Are a very small subset of people seeing increases? Yes, clearly. But even then most of the people complaining aren't really shopping around as they should be, they're just upset about what their current insurance provider is offering.) Plus, all of these new plans are offering better coverage for the majority of people- because they have to by law (ACA). Your "services will have declined" answer is clearly fantastical. Look at all of the people who now have real insurance rather than what they had before- which was either NOTHING or, if they were healthy enough that it was an option, a scam catastrophic plan.

So, modest decrease in premiums (or, at worst, stasis) for much better coverage? I don't think that's a hard call.

But as I said long-term effects are, well, long-term. We aren't there yet, so we don't know, and I think it is hubristic that you think that you DO know. But it is interesting that ALL of the projections that predict increased premiums are based upon input from the insurance industry and are released by Republicans.

I'm not sure what your property tax comment was about. Sort of a non-sequitur, there. :) Or was that just a de rigueur blanket anti-tax comment? Are you one of those "we shouldn't have any taxes at all" Objectivist wingnuts? Because I'm all for low taxes, but I think that clearly we do need some.

Then you should be ecstatic! Fewer people will use the county hospital and not be able to pay! I certainly wouldn't predict that your property taxes would go UP due to the ACA. And the "service that it provides" is exactly what I'm talking about, Brother- it's clearly better. Much more stuff is covered.

If you are proposing that somehow the quality of medical care will fall simply because the insurance companies are now forced to provide wider coverage, well, that's frankly magical thinking or something. If they pay for it, they pay for it. I'm not magically going to do a slipshod cholecystectomy just because I get to bill Kaiser for it and actually get reimbursed rather than billing an uninsured person who will never pay. :)

Who is "friend?" Because you cannot be denied coverage- that's now illegal. (Right?) That's sort of one of the big points of the ACA. What are "friend's" circumstances? I doubt that the whole story is quite that simple- lost coverage, then denied on the exchange. But I'm curious to hear the tale.

Since health care costs have been going up a lot in recent years, hard to evaluate ACA in the future - if costs go up, but it's less than recent history, maybe it's a success

Some states there is a larger decrease - if a state already has some pre-existing conditions regulations, then there will be a larger decrease. If a state has few pre-existing conditions regulations, the cost will probably go up but you're getting something for that, no pre-existing conditions denial of health care

Over-all, ACA has a number of improvements like pre-existing conditions, minimal care standards, coverage of children to age 26,... so if it costs more, you're getting something for that.

Friend has pre-existing conditions. Humana Insurance Co., through Humana One, denies coverage strictly on underwriting risk, not a clinical viewpoint. I don't know who dropped him. I don't know the entire story either. This was only one of several denials.

See, now I am quite curious. I don't think he was denied on the exchange. Because, as I said, that is illegal. However, if you go looking for non-exchange policies (they do still exist) then, yes, you can be denied for being high-risk just as before the ACA. So I suspect that some little detail was left out of that story somewhere- your friend was looking at non-exchange policies or something, possibly because he's having trouble with whatever exchange website applies to him, since many are being glitchy.

As I've said before, the ACA is far, far from perfect. But this is one of the better provisions, IMHO. Your friend should be enthusiastic about this- he should actually be able to get insurance at a reasonable premium, especially if he's low-income and qualifies for a subsidy.

The few people who have seen premiums rise tend to be wealthier people who don't qualify for any subsidies and who buy private insurance rather than getting it through an employer. (Because if you already get decent insurance through your employer then the ACA pretty much doesn't affect you at all- which is something like 80% of Americans.) Before the ACA your friend might never have been able to get insurance at all due to his pre-existing condition, now that Humana has discarded him.